New Directions: Online Learning and the University of California’s A-G Subject Area Requirements – Monica Lin

Keeping Pace with K12 Online Learning with John Watson and Kelly Schwirzke

Jenny Thomas – Creating a Community in the Online Classroom

Jenny Thomas – Creating Community in the Classroom

Hall Davidson – Plenary Session – When the Inside Becomes the Outside: The Old Book as the New Backpack

Captured on December 8, 2012 at the eLearning Strategies Symposium, Hall Davidson of Discovery Education engages and enlightens attendees.

eLearning Strategies Symposium

Call for Speakers

Share your online learning expertise with California educators and policy makers at the second annual eLearning Strategies Symposium on December 6th and 7th, 2013. Having exceeded our expectations last year, we’re looking for a variety of sessions, geared towards educators and administrators, about online and blended learning.

Two session proposal windows are offered. During this Early Bird window, which closes May 2nd, we’ll be filling two-thirds of the concurrent sessions. A shorter, Just in Time, proposal window opens mid-August and closes in mid-September for the final third. Speaker acceptances for the first round will be emailed the week of May 13th. All speakers will receive a complementary registration to the symposium. Industry-sponsored sessions must include a Corporate Partnership Application.

Symposium presentations should focus on one of eSS’ five strands:

• Big Picture, which includes administration, management, evaluation, research, policy or advocacy;
• Content (curriculum and online course development, best practices, accessibility, or instructional design);
• Capacity Building (professional development);
• Gear (tools, technologies, learning management systems, or application development); or
• Pedagogy (engaging students, teaching and learning pedagogies, blended learning models, learning communities, or assessment).

Symposium presentations are one-hour in duration with one session each hour being live-streamed and recorded for future distribution. Speakers may opt-out of live-streaming.

With online and blended learning growing 20-25% each year and with more than 200,000 California students participating in virtual or blended learning, now is the time for a California conference focused on teaching and learning online. Please join us in Costa Mesa next December.

eLearning Strategies Symposium Call for Speakers

Symposium Registration Now Open

Early Bird Symposium registration is now open until October 1st. Just $159, registration includes Friday and Saturday sessions and a keynote/lunch on Friday. Groups of two or more who are from the same school, district, or organization may register for $149 until October 1st.

Regular registration rates from October 2nd through November 30^thare $199. Regular Group registration from October 2nd through November 30th is $169.

Pay by credit card, Pay By Check, or Pay by Purchase Order:

If your district can not pay by credit card, you may issue a Purchase Order and either submit a check for registration or you may mail the purchase order to us. Download check / purchase order form.

• Please make checks payable to: Stanislaus County School Service Fund (SCSSF).
• Purchase orders should be made out to: Stanislaus County Office of Education

1. First, register your participant(s) on our site by clicking the registration link below.
2. Below the ORDER NOW button, select SHOW OTHER PAYMENT OPTIONS
3. Indicate the number of registrations and click PAY OFFLINE
4. Enter ticket buyer information, registrant name, school information, and lunch preference.
5. Click PAY BY CHECK
6. Send payment or purchase order, along with information on all registrants, to:

eSS Registration, ℅ CLRN
Stanislaus County Office of Education
1100 H Street
Modesto, CA 95354

Register for the Symposium

Collecting and analyzing data isn’t just a classroom trend. Most projects we’re involved with collect data to gauge stakeholder attitudes, opinions, and concerns and use those results to improve. The eLearning Strategies Symposium attendee evaluation is no different. Below are some of the data points we’ve found in the survey.

You came, you mostly enjoyed the meals, although some felt the chicken was too dry or the rice too bland. You came, though, and recognized that ESS was an important and special event.  90% of our attendees loved the location, the hotel accommodations (98%), the selection of speakers (91%), and the wireless access (88%).

You prefer paper. While the symposium program was also available as an iPad app, 64% of you felt the printed program was either Moderately or Highly Important. This is in slight contrast with the 48% of you who felt the iPad App was also Moderately or Highly Important.

You don’t tweet, though. 68% of our attendees felt that our Twitter feed and ESS hashtag were either Slightly or Not Important, which explains the sparse Twitter stream during the symposium.

Below are some of your comments.

• I’m so happy that I attended this conference – yet I am completely overwhelmed with the exciting possibilities for the future of education.  I can only share this information with our district and hope that we will be able to implement new technological ideologies for the future!

• This was the most beneficial conference I have been to in a while.  Very applicable and focused to e-Learning.  I appreciated the work that went into this conference.  I plan on attending annually.

• This conference had a variety of sessions where I learned new things that I will use in my position and resources that I will share with my staff.  I would like to see more sessions geared towards administrators in the future.

• Excellent conference. Excellent pricing…Will attend next year! Thanks.

• Very good sessions with engaging presenters. Looking forward to an expanded conference next year!!  Suggestion — maybe a bit more time between sessions to visit with sponsors.

• “Great concurrent sessions – had a difficult time deciding which one to attend in each time slot. Except for the lower level rooms being cold, the facilities were very nice, and the acoustics were good.

• “Great Job! Wonderful Keynote speakers. Incredible to see the direction education is heading. Truly exciting times! Thank you!”

• An absolutely excellent symposium on a crucial topic.  Looking forward to learning even more and sharing more next year.

• Overall, I greatly appreciated the conference.  I thought the information was stellar and could have listened to a couple of the speakers for days on end.  A few of the presentations were not very good and hope that comes through in my other reflections.  Being from out of state, I knew no one but that didn’t matter as everyone was very friendly and open to sharing ideas.  I hope to come back again next year.

• This was a valuable conference with so much knowledge and expertise.  I am looking forward to attending next year.  My only complaint was that the food was not at all satisfactory.  In fact, some of it was inedible.  However, the accommodations were very nice; the conference staff and content were excellent.

• I thought the conference was wonderful! I learned so much to share with my coworkers. I enjoyed listening to other speakers about their programs and their structures.

Buried in the analytics for our eLearning Strategies Symposium Attendees was additional data about who came to ESS 12. While we listed a number of standard job positions, like teacher, administrator, and I.T. Professional, many attendees didn’t align perfectly with the positions we offerred and wrote in their own. These included counselors, grant coordinators, project specialists, and industry representatives. Below is an updated pie chart of those who attended ESS, which is composed of 42% administrators, 23% teachers, 14% technology coordinators, 6% each of industry representatives and district support personnel, and 4% each of IT professionals and counselors. Hotel Reservation and ESS Registration opens Monday, March 4th. Session Proposals will open March 18th. More information may be found at the ESS web site.

Plans are underway for the 2013 eLearning Strategies Symposium to be held on December 6th and 7th, 2013 at the Hilton Costa Mesa. After last year’s sold out symposium, we’ve reserved the entire hotel and are expecting 500+ attendees.

Here are a few key dates to keep in mind.

Event Registration Opens: March 4th
Hotel Reservations Open: March 4th
Awards Nominations Open: March 4th
Speaker Proposals Open: March 18th
Speaker Proposals Close: May 2nd
ESS Workshops Announced: July 29th
Just-in-Time Speaker Proposals Open: August 12th
Super Early Bird Rates End: September 6th
Award Nominations Close: September 9th
Just-in-Tie Speaker Proposals Close: September 13th
Early Bird Rates End: November 1st